Naveen Jain Quotes

I had such high expectations of myself. I was going to be the best mother, the best housewife, the best entertainer, the best nurse, you know - what it was, I was going to be the best. And I could never live up to my expectations.

That was the big secret. Walt would do things over and over again, with no regard to money, to get things perfect.

Writing on assignment, with lots of money handed to you before you even began, got very scary for me. My dread of not being perfect, something I got from a childhood surrounded by powerful, successful people, began to infect everything I wrote.

Every time, all the time, I'm a perfectionist. I feel I should never lose.

I remember when I wanted every pitch to be a strike.

I'm not ready to do any compromises for my work.

In the business world today, failure is apparently not an option. We need to change this attitude toward failure - and celebrate the idea that only by falling on our collective business faces do we learn enough to succeed down the road.

I want to be perfect. I don't want to fail. And you always fail.

'Good enough is good enough' - that's never been acceptable for me.

I'm always looking to the next thing. There are always hurdles, whether it's the White House dinner or hosting charity events or that night's show: Until they're over, I worry, then I move right on to the next thing. It's hard for me to enjoy the moment. I'm just thinking about not failing.

There are some people who never get used to losing at anything, and I am probably one of them.

My mom to this day is the hardest coach I've ever had. There were times when my stepdad would look at me and say 'you had a good game' and my mom would be like 'I don't know what you're talking about, you had 2 or 3 turnovers.

When I brought home a 98 percent on a test, my father would say, 'Ah, ah, where are the other two points? Go and get them, then bring them back.' My father and Nigerian culture has always stood for excellence.

The music industry is an unforgiving place, and it shall unceremoniously show you the door if you can't perform to high standards.

Anything less than gold is a failure to me. It's extreme pressure, but I hold myself to a high standard.

For me, it's life or death doing plays: there's this perfectionist thing about me that it has to be brilliant - anything less than that is a failure.

My fears are never about failure - it's about extreme success.

Getting cut four separate times really never stopped me.

It's hard to continue to be great and have so much on your back, knowing that even a little mistake can mess you up for good.

My whole freshman year at Duke, it was drilled into me that nothing was given to you, and you have to earn it, and this is a dog-eat-dog world, and blah blah blah, and blah blah blah. And you buy into it, 100 percent. You end up loving it. That's the way it should be, right?

I just want to be perfect on court, but is not possible. The perfect doesn't exist.

If you can't sell your product, it's not a product-it's a hobby.

I'm a firm believer in making it happen - no matter what 'it' is. Sometimes I feel a bit too driven - where it's all I think about. But I guess that's gotten me to where I am, so I can't complain.

Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.

There are agencies who are good losers, places where losing is not only accepted, it becomes part of the culture, it is expected. That is debilitating. Don't let that happen to you. At Deutsch we go into every pitch assuming we are the Yankees. It's amazing what happens when you go into a room of smart, hungry people and say, "Failure is not an option." People are galvanized.